


An emptiness to fill

by sandorara



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: A sprinkle of thirst for flavour, Ambiguous Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Canon Compliant Murder, Character Study, Family Issues, Implied Zenos/WoL, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:08:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28089039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandorara/pseuds/sandorara
Summary: Not even his own father would stand between them and their reunion.For the FFXIV gift exchange 2020.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6
Collections: Final Fantasy XIV Gift Exchange 2020





	An emptiness to fill

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stepOnMeZenos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stepOnMeZenos/gifts).



> Happy holidays!!  
> I hope this will tick at least some of your boxes! Your prompts were all interesting, and I ended up picking a small bits and pieces here and there from the two Zenos related ones. So there's a little bit of dysfunctional father-son combo in here as well, despite it being mostly a short character study. 
> 
> I wasn't sure from the prompts whether you have read the print exclusive short story about Zenos in the Chronicles of Light, so I chose to not reference it notably, just in case.

It was an amusing thing, the idea of familial closeness, of caring for others due to nothing but blood relations. —It was not unclear to Zenos how his actions would look to any on-looker, as his father’s body fell to the floor in front of him, cut open, broken and discarded. Falling into a heap like nothing but the marionette he was, strings now cut, as his own son placed himself on the imposing throne mere yalms behind the body.

They would think he had thirsted for his father’s position, they would think he carried bitterness towards the man, they would think it was a tragic end to a troubled father-son relationship. Were they to walk in on the situation — with Zenos lounging comfortably on the throne his father had ruled from for the last few years — who could even blame them for such an analysis? Zenos let out a small huff of a breath, almost like a laugh.

Perhaps they would then find themselves confused, once he would denounce any claim to the throne, such a position of nothing but symbolic pretend power holding no interest for him. Perhaps they would question then, why he had done what he did, why he had committed something as _atrocious_ as patricide. As if their judgement, and their idea of a father, of a son’s relationship to said father, was anything Zenos cared about.

No, Zenos had always been alone, and Varis had never been the one who could change that.

So he felt no sadness, as he stepped over his father’s dead body, aiming to exit the throne room and leave the new-comers to deal with the fall-out. He felt no joy either — the man had not been a worthy enough opponent to elicit such a response in Zenos. If anything at all, he felt a twinge of regret. Not at the loss of a father, nor that their paths had to end in bloodshed this way, but at the fact that even despite everything, despite all the years of coldness, of loneliness, of _boredom_ , he had found within himself the shards of respect for the man who had fathered him, yet in the end Varis had brought him nothing but disappointment.

That though Varis had been the one to once upon a time set him on this path, though he had been the one to allocate duties of training the crown prince to the right victim, the one who would serve as the seed for Zenos’ hunger— his own position, above Zenos, remained nothing but an illusion, so easily broken into a million pieces with one slash of a sword. A pity.

Yes, all he felt was disappointment, that not even his own father was anything but a mere shadow of the equal Zenos had found in the Eikon Slayer. But children were perhaps always meant to surpass their parents?

His footsteps echoed in the familiar, wide corridors, dark and abandoned in the middle of the uproar plaguing the palace. Any guards and patrols that should have been there instead focusing in on what Zenos was leaving behind. The sound was oddly pleasing however, his own familiar gait different to the body he had arrived in. There was no shame in vanity, and his one friend, his one worthy opponent — the only soul on this forsaken star that Zenos had ever found himself capable of caring about — deserved only the best at their next meeting. They deserved to be met with the same effort that they themselves would put into their plight, they deserved a spectacle more grandiose than Zenos had succeeded in creating the last times they had encountered one another. They deserved Zenos at his absolute best, just as Zenos would expect of them.

And no one, not even his own father, would stand between them and their reunion.

No other had ever made his journey worth it, no other had ever made his blood prickle, heat him up from the inside or made his mind fill with _lust_. No other had ever made him feel the need or wish to meddle in political hierarchy, as he had just moments earlier.

His world had been empty once. Empty rooms, empty corridors, empty _people_ , there only to serve, because they were ordered to. People who feared him, too caught up in manufactured systems of influence and power to understand that no matter how much they tried to please the people above them, no matter how much they performed importance— they would never be worthy of his attention.

Even after discovering the joy of the Hunt, of finding prey, of developing oneself, of finding the means of overcoming biology and its aetherical restrictions, the emptiness had mostly continued. Empty rooms had become empty libraries, empty research facilities and empty barracks, as his quest for challenge led him on his father’s path of expansion.

Perhaps he had been resigned to a life of emptiness, without pleasure and without anything to care about. Perhaps he had accepted that such was his nature, that there was nothing in this world that would truly set his blood ablaze.

But he was humble enough to admit he had been wrong, that there existed one soul out there who spoke to him so deeply that the emptiness filled with noise, with light and with _motivation_. And since that moment, he had had but one goal. And nothing would keep him away from it, no Empire, no Ascian machinations and no blood relations.

All Zenos felt was want, _lust_. And he was willing to wait, he was willing to use any tools at his disposal. All those years of emptiness, had if anything, given him patience. What were a few more moments of scheming in the shadows, of letting other puppeteers and their puppets play their parts, when he had waited for more than twenty six years.

There were noises of fighting behind him grew more quiet as his steps took him further and further away from the throne room. The Black Wolf and his entourage would surely escape, and lead the news to the Eorzeans. And so the news would surely reach Them. They, who would eventually return from _other worlds_ safe and sound and perhaps _even stronger_. The thought excited him, set off small tingles in his body, a warmth running through his muscles, laced in anticipation.

The palace was almost quiet, as he left it behind for possibly the last time. To not acknowledge or scrutinise the hollowness that settled inside him, as his long strides lef him further and further away from perhaps the only home he had ever known, was a choice.

And as he caught his own reflection in a window, wearing his own familiar face again, he _smiled_.

Progress.


End file.
